


Make Believe

by kristin



Category: Summerland - Michael Chabon
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristin/pseuds/kristin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a drawer. It is not a fancy drawer, or even corporeal, some of the time. And the contents of this drawer is one the most precious currency there is. For this drawer holds stories and tales that were just off enough to never be told. Usually they come covered in red ink warning about facts and the difference between reality and fiction.</p><p>Now, if you were to look in that drawer, you might find this story, filed but never run, about the comeback year of Rodrigo Buendia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Believe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



_There is a drawer. It is not a fancy drawer, or even corporeal some of the time. And the contents of this drawer is one of the most precious currencies there is. For this drawer holds stories and tales that were just off enough to never be told. Usually they come covered in red ink warning about facts and the difference between reality and fiction._

_Now, if you were to look in that drawer, you might find this story, filed but never run, about the comeback year of Rodrigo Buendia._

 

"Dude, you see this, right?"

He speaks like a surfer, his relaxed voice at odds with his muscular stature. You can't even blame his now defunct stay in Southern California. He has peppered his sentences, English and Spanish both, with 'likes' and 'dudes' since long before the name Rodrigo Buendia became synonymous with words like 'decline' and 'past his prime.'

Baseball lends itself well to legend. The pitching duels and the last minute outs, the bottom of the ninth and the full count, all of it combines to create potential moments. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the history of baseball is full of tall tales of make believe and mythology.

But in addition to the structure, baseball also has the truly great ingredient that spices the mixture perfectly. Unlike their cross-sport compatriots in football and hockey, you can see their faces, the shadows cast by the brims of their caps only occasionally obscuring the distinct features of the players.

Baseball has characters. From the Gehrig down to Dykstra, baseball players have run the gamut. And yet, even among that far ranging cast of characters, some players stand out.

"It is like whoa cool," he continues.

It is not. He is looking excitedly at the ivy adorning the walls of his new baseball home, pointing at a leaf that looks just like the rest banded across the walls of Wrigley. He has played here many times, though never before been stationed here permanently until now, has seen the ivy grow from thin vines to lush cushioning.

Perhaps he is just happy to be out here, released from to the DH pasture where he had been sent, like so many faded hitting greats. His face is contorted with wonderment, staring at the leaf like a child at a pillow with a tooth hidden underneath, waiting expectantly for the fairy to come. When he is told this, he says seriously, “Not a fairy. I think maybe a pixie.”

It is an odd quote from a man who has given many an odd quote. None quite so fantastic as the now infamous story of his crossing over from Cuba, a story that has been revised again and again until the telling of it has eclipsed the tale itself.

It has reached the point where everyone has an opinion. Those who steadfastly cling to the heroic tale at odds with naysayers who crow about Buendia’s lying ways. More and more these days, though, you find those who elide right over it.

People forgive a lot when you win.

And perhaps the strangest thing is, Buendia is winning again. His bat and glove both have been golden since his trade to Chicago. He is a hero, not because of a larger-than-life adventure on the high seas, but because of the way he swings the bat. The way his arm muscles bulge and then hold steady as he prepares for a pitch, the way he stares down pitchers; his platonic form of a baseball swing, that is his his heroic C.V.

There have been the usual hushed rumors of PEDs and artificial knees acquired in shady experimental surgeries to try and explain his season. But there is another idea out there that maybe it was necessary. The expose, the decline, all of it, just the bleak chasm the hero needs to claw out of to make for an epic comeback.

Or maybe it was all the fault of pixies.

He has only been a Cub for two months and apparently already has his theory about the lack of banner over the past century. “That’s why the Cubs, I mean we, never won it all. Pixies. I asked a friend about the goat and he told me all about it.”

Once upon a time, though really it was more like 1918, there was a game. It was played both here and there, guess right here it is so close that you can do that, go right from one branch to the other between innings.”

When asked where there was, Rodrigo smiles, a far off gleam in his eye. “Dude, the Summerland, of course. They love baseball there. Even the pixies. And because they loved it so much, they didn’t like what they could hear across the branch, with the Cubs winning all the time. They got jealous.

“And pixies are vicious.”

He pauses here shaking his head. His eyes are clear and his manner calm as he continues, “So they started stealing the wins. Not all of them, but the big ones, the important ones. Sneaking over and sabotaging things.”

He is a good storyteller, telling his tale sincerely, making you believe it. He even calls in backup.

Jennifer T., never Jenny, walks out onto the field with the unerring stride of a veteran. It is a strange sight. There is an instinctual awe that comes over some people when they walk onto a diamond as storied as this one. But while it was shining out of her eyes like the rawest rookie, her motions stayed strong and smooth.

It is a rarer quality than you might think, especially as she is maybe all of 12 years old. When asked, she denies having been out here before. “Rodrigo asked me to come and see if I could help.”

She doesn’t call him dad, and in fact, is not related to him all. “Wrong kind of brown,” he says, laughing. He does, however, have a daughter, also named Jennifer, of the same age. Rodrigo’s Jennifer doesn’t like baseball, he says. But he is trying, luring her with sabremetrics. “She’s so smart with math, dude. Gets it from her mom.”

Jennifer T. is currently visiting Buendia in particular and Chicago in general and is the reason they are at the field at all. “He wanted us to see that,” she waves a hand towards the ivy. Jennifer T. was to scout out the pixie infestation and report back to her friend Ethan and his father.

It was with Ethan and another friend that she met Buendia, a tale in itself. “We snuck into his house, and he was in his bathrobe, and there we were hoping to meet him.” She says it brazenly, like breaking into a baseball star’s mansion is an easy task. You might stop wondering why Jennifer T. was called upon to help in the war against the pixies.

“Need to get it fixed up so we can win,” says Buendia.

He wants to win, needs to, compulsively, in the way of high-level athletes. And he wants to do it here, and soon. When asked about retirement earlier this year, Buendia said, “I been to the end of the world. There was still baseball.”

Six months later, Rodrigo has won.

Everyone knows how his season ended. The leaping catch into the ivy and pennant won. Everyone knows Buendia was the hero, but maybe, just maybe, that ending makes you believe that maybe there was more to it. That maybe he really did go to the Summerlands and stop a pixie invasion with a tiny man-child and a girl old beyond her age.

But all Buendia says is, "Dude," he says, "I am no hero. I just came back."


End file.
